ld and five
hundred full of silver, and, in short, anything you like to ask me for.'

"'Madam Ragotte,' said I, 'when one is at the bottom of a pit where one
has fully expected to be roasted alive, it is impossible to think of
asking such a charming person as you are to marry one! I beg that you
will set me at liberty, and then I shall hope to answer you fittingly.'

"'Ah!' said she, 'if you really loved me you would not care where you
were--a cave, a wood, a fox-hole, a desert, would please you equally
well. Do not think that you can deceive me; you fancy you are going to
escape, but I assure you that you are going to stay here and the first
thing I shall give you to do will be to keep my sheep--they are very
good company and speak quite as well as you do.

"As she spoke she advanced, and led me to this plain where we now stand,
and showed me her flock, but I paid little attention to it or to her.

"To tell the truth, I was so lost in admiration of her beautiful slave
that I forgot everything else, and the cruel Ragotte, perceiving this,
turned upon her so furious and terrible a look that she fell lifeless to
the ground.

"At this dreadful sight I drew my sword and rushed at Ragotte, and
should certainly have cut off her head had she not by her magic arts
chained me to the spot on which I stood; all my efforts to move were
useless, and at last, when I threw myself down on the ground in despair,
she said to me, with a scornful smile:

"'I intend to make you feel my power. It seems that you are a lion at
present, I mean you to be a sheep.'

"So saying, she touched me with her wand, and I became what you see. I
did not lose the power of speech, or of feeling the misery of my present
state.

"'For five years,' she said, 'you shall be a sheep, and lord of this
pleasant land, while I, no longer able to see your face, which I loved
so much, shall be better able to hate you as you deserve to be hated.'

"She disappeared as she finished speaking, and if I had not been too
unhappy to care about anything I should have been glad that she was
gone.

"The talking sheep received me as their king, and told me that they,
too, were unfortunate princes who had, in different ways, offended the
revengeful fairy, and had been added to her flock for a certain number
of years; some more, some less. From time to time, indeed, one regains
his own proper form and goes back again to his place in the upper world;
but the other beings w